THE BURROWERS 



legs. This is placed just within and to one side of the 

 entrance, and then more armfuls are brought up, until, 

 after two or three trips, the opening is entirely filled. 



We once captured the wasp in a bottle, as she re- 

 turned, loaded, to the nest. She dropped the beetle, 

 but soon picked it up again and stung it vigorously, with 

 intention, as the French say, first under the neck, and 

 then further back, behind the first pair of legs. After 

 this it was dropped while the wasp fluttered about for a 

 few minutes, but it was then picked up again, and stung 

 as before. We both saw this operation repeated in 

 exactly the same way, four different times, with intervals 

 of five or six minutes between. 



In a nest which we excavated after watching it for 

 nine days, we found nothing until we had gone six inches 

 down, and at this point the tunnel was lost; but mixed 

 with the crumbly earth that we took out of the hole, we 

 found eight beetles and a half-grown larva of clypeata. 

 The destruction of this nest was accomplished one 

 morning, and when we came back to the spot twenty- 

 four hours later we found that a new one had been made 

 close by, doubtless by the same individual. We had ex- 

 pected to find her bringing beetles and dropping them 

 foolishly on the ground like Paul Marchal's Cerceris 

 ornata, and were gratified that she showed an advance 



